Chapter Text
Alana Bloom’s heels clatter along the sterile floor of the hospital hallway. For a long while that was the only steady sound around. A click-clock, click-clock, click-clock, that pairs the beats of her heart with the strike of Louis Vuitton on tile. That is, of course, until she reaches the fifth floor of the west wing, where most of the acute rehabilitation patients were kept under the watchful eyes of a Post Intensive Care unit. Turning the corner, she’s met with… well, a hiss.
“Psss!” Alana stalls, the snapping of her heels stammering with the skip of her heartbeat. She waits a second, two, “Psss! You there!” she manages to track the noise, the voice, this time, up the hall to a bay window, where a potted plant had been placed.
A fiddle leaf fig tree with a face poking around the foliage. It’s a girl, Alana sees. A teen with a sharp, pale face and a crown of messy, dark curls, and possibly the greenest eyes she had ever seen before. Something about it, that face, that jawline, the slope of an eye, rings something familiar in the back of Alana’s hindbrain.
Alana, nevertheless, doesn’t have much time to ponder over this before the girl is grinning when she notices she’s been spotted. A nimble hand joining the face to shepherd Alana closer. “Yes, you!” she nods encouragingly, as if she was tempting a cat over with a can of tuna. “Come over here a sec.” Wearily, Alana edges down the hall, towards where she was beckoned.
The closer she gets, the easier it is to scent the air. She’s struck with sweet pomegranate, tart pine, a little black liquorice like the penny candy Alana used to have as a child and always left abandoned in the bottom of her paper bag, capped with a zingy type of taste that’s a little bit burnt and cracks in the air like pop-rocks. Underlying was the unmistakable incendiary scent of an unmarked Omega.
“Are you alright?” Alana asks, giving the hall a quick scan for any parents or guardians or nurses that might be in care of the girl. She finds nothing but a few paintings on the wall, more closed doors, one of which must belong to Will, the person Alana had come to visit, and the water cooler down the way. “Do you want me to fetch you a doctor or-“
“Fancy a trade?” Alana crests around the fiddle leaf, far enough now to get a proper look at the girl. She’s in hospital greens, a woollen blanket thrown haphazardly over her knees, sitting in a wheelchair. Above said knees, laying over the blanket as if it was the most natural place for it to be, was… a dust bunny hand-held vacuum cleaner that had seen better days. “So what about it?” The girl barters with dimples pressed deep in her freckled cheeks. “Got something in that nice handbag of yours?”
“Uh,” Alana begins, because what else is she meant to say? “I’m sorry. I’m not… really… interested in a new vacuum.”
“No?” the girl cocks her head curiously, delving a hand beneath her blanket, by her hip, digging something out of the creases. “What about some-“ she pulls the limb out, palm open, flashing silver at Alana. “Nescafe coffee pods?” She must take Alana’s stunned silence for insouciance, because she goes back to digging under her blanket, this time coming out with a golden tube that glints in the sunlight filtering through the large window besides them. “Or, to go with your pretty handbag, what about some Chanel lipstick? The red will really match your coat.”
“I-“ Alana begins, falters, begins again. “I’m sorry, what is going on-“ but the girl won’t be deterred.
“Lipstick ain’t your thing. Got it. But what about some sunscreen?” she pulls a travel sized bottle out, carelessly throwing it over her shoulder at Alana’s bewildered blink. “Safety pins?” They clatter like Alana’s heels as they bounce away down the hall. “This mighty fine Rubik’s cube? Okay, okay, okay,” the girl ditches the multicoloured box on the windowsill, settling Alana with a no-nonsense look with a steeple of her hands she presses to her lips. “You’re a tough cookie to crack. I give you that. I suppose if you give me thirty minutes, I might be able to get my hands on some very potent opioids that I would be willing to part ways with for a tidy little price. Say… a bottle of coconut rum and a curry-“
“And that’s enough of that for today.” Finally, since strolling into this fairyland hall, Alana is struck with good sense, with reason, with a friendly face. Will Graham comes out of a door only three down the way, one that had been left slightly ajar. He fixes himself by the wall, leaning up against plaster by his shoulder. He smiles almost apologetically at Alana.
“Excuse, Hemlock.” He says in way of greeting, as if this was a perfectly normal sentiment, as if he’s said it ten times already just that morning. “She’s been out here haggling with any passers-by for the last hour. Honestly, it’s been a little impressive to witness. She only started out with a single gummy bear she found on the floor.”
The girl, Hemlock, and suddenly it makes sense-
More sense, at least, to Alana, because that was the name Hannibal had given to Jack about the girl in the hospital, Will’s surprise sister, a Hemlock Potter… and didn’t Alana spot it from the beginning? There had been something familiar to the girl, recollection hiding in a curve and a freckle.
“Excuse Will,” Hemlock bats back just as quickly, before Alana can truly find her footing in this conversation. “He’s just annoyed I wouldn’t give him the Rubik’s cube.”
“That is not true,” Will interjects, and suddenly it’s like Alana isn’t there at all. So centred on each other the two became.
“Yes it is,” Hemlock accuses impatiently. “I’ve seen you eyeing it.”
“I’ve been eyeing your mounting psychosis if you think you’re going to be able to trade your way up with strangers for a pack of cigarettes, Hemlock.” Will kicks off from the wall, shoving his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “What would you even do if you got them? You can’t smoke in a hospital.”
“Ah,” Hemlock grins, no longer the girl tempting but the cat itself. The cat who ate the canary. “Whoever said I was after a smoke? I want Vodka. Whisky. Bloody hell, I’d take a warm beer right now-“
“Yes,” Will rolls his eyes, as if they’ve been through this before more than once, “because you’re going to find someone carrying any of that in a hospital. No one in their right mind is going to give an underage teen alcohol in a post intensive care ward-“
“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” Hemlock chuckles, impish and playful. “We’re in a hospital. Half of the people here aren’t in their right mind, or they wouldn’t be here to begin with. Plus, we’re in the land of red, white and blue, baby. That means I bet ya by the end of the day I could get my hands on a gun, and then it’s a simple case of stick-‘em-up at the local seven-eleven-“
Will pinches at the bridge of his nose, as if he’s fighting a migraine and not a teenage girl who’s currently seat bound. “I swear, Hemlock, you try and get a gun and I’m taking the wheelchair back-“
“Then keep your sticky fingers away from my Rubik’s cube-“
“Me? You’re calling me sticky fingered? Who was the one who pick-pocketed the poor nurse who came to change your sheets this morning? Because it wasn’t me-“
“Oh, lay off. It was a pack of juicy fruit gum. He’s hardly going to miss it-“
“That’s not the point and you know it. You keep this up, and you’re going to be discharged straight into a jail cell this afternoon-“
“Bold of you to assume a jail cell could hold me-“
“I’m beginning to think a lake of ice in the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno couldn’t hold you for long, Hemlock-“
“Are you calling me Satan?”
“If the shoe fits-“
Alana, politely, coughs into a closed fist. She keeps her hand there a while, if only to hide her rising smile. Despite the harsh words traded between the two as swiftly as song between birds in a treetop, hardly any were said in true malice. Throughout the exchange Will’s grin had never faltered, Hemlock’s dimples never lessoned, and it was… good to see Will this way.
At ease, smiling, shoulders drawn low from his ears and back in relaxation. Far away from the twitching, Advil downing, dark-circle eyed man he’d become after Garret Jacob Hobbs.
That is to say that man was still there, of course he was still there, Will needed a good sleep and a good shave still, and he couldn’t hide the slight tremble of fatigue to his hands, but to see him so… comfortable, so calm, it was… good. Yes, good.
Good, and odd, as if Alana had stepped through the looking glass and was watching some inverted, upside down, buttons-for-eyes Will. There’s a tinge of something else too, a bite in the bottom of her belly that stings something fierce, a feeling Alana refuses to label as jealousy. Envy that, despite her best efforts, despite how long she’s been seeing Will inside and outside her office, Alana had not come even remotely close to eliciting the same response from the habitually reclusive man.
The only other time Will seemed so at ease in his own skin was when he was around Dr. Lecter.
“Before we resort to robbery or exorcisms, how about an introduction?” Alana steps in when the two blink back at her, snatched out of each other’s orbit by her intervention. “I’m Alana Bloom. I’m a…” she hesitates here, searching for the right word though that seems to be far out of her reach.
Alana’s not quite friends with Will. Their professional relationship, or more aptly her professional curiosity over someone like Will, negates that claim. Neither is their relationship entirely professional, so calling him her patient was an outright lie. In truth, Alana doesn’t really know what she and Will are to each other, and so she settles on the easiest, the safest, definition. “Colleague of your brothers. We work together sometimes.”
Will smiles reassuringly at her, that kind-soft-lopsided one he did without thinking, and-
Hemlock scans her from peep-toe to neck scarf, and her nose curls up like she’s smelled something positively foul. “Really?” She asks Will, not waiting for a reply “Will.” She moans with a rueful headshake. Equally indulgent and scandalized. “What will Hannibal think of this, aye?”
“Okay,” Will holds his hand up, as if he was trying to ward the girl off, “that’s not-… we’re not… you know what? I think it’s time for your rest.” He crosses the short distance between the two, seizing the handles of Hemlock’s wheelchair, dragging her from her hidden perch behind the fiddle leaf tree with an undignified Hey! squawking from the small teen.
“It’s not my fault,” Hemlock contends as she’s dragged towards what must be her room door, still looking like the cat with a yellow feather poking out her teeth “you attract head shrinks like Apple collects sweatshops.”
Will pauses by the door, going far enough to kick the lock break on the back roller of the wheelchair, regarding his sister with an unimpressed arm cross. “For the last time, there is nothing going on between me and Hannibal, and,” he stresses hard, “there is nothing going on between me and Alana. In fact, it’s Alana and Hannibal who have been going out for coffees over the last month,” Alana hadn’t known Will had known about that, “they’re the ones dating.”
Well, Alana thinks but doesn’t say, dating is a bit of a… stretch. Hannibal has cooked for her, yes, and took her out for coffee and pastries twice, and… sure, she had spent the night a couple of times, but they had yet to put anything tangible into words.
Hemlock, however, meets her brother head on, unconvinced. “Yeah,” She scoffs heartily. “Because no where in the history of all human kind has someone ever dated the best friend to try and get the attention of their crush. Honestly, Will-“
“Honestly,” Will butts in, unlatching the lock, hip-checking the door to Hemlock’s room wide open and carting her in. “It’s time for a rest.”
Nevertheless, before Hemlock is hauled around the door and out of sight, she shoots one last look Alana’s way, and the smile on the teen’s face could be taken as wry. In an unkinder light, it might be mistaken for mocking. “Hannibal would look better in those kitten heels too. He’d work them harder and make them look less… tacky. Not like a piglet in tutu-“
The teen disappears, and unceremoniously, Will shuts the door in her face, cutting her voice off. Slowly, deliberately, he runs a hand down his face. “You really will have to forgive Hemlock,” he repeats, palm catching on his stubble. “She means well, but she uses insults as ice-breakers.”
“No I don’t!” comes a yell from the other side of the door. “I never mean well. I mean unwell. The worst well. I radiate ill-will!”
“Go for your nap!” Will shouts back, and there’s a squeak behind the door, tire on tile.
“Fine, fine,” there’s a mumble, perhaps another insult, “I’m going. Keep your Henley on.” By the fading of the voice, Hemlock was heading towards her bed and now out of ear shot.
“That was… uh,” Alana flounders, “something.” She pathetically lands on. Will’s answering laughter is warm and dark, like Panama dark chocolate that melts on the tip of a tongue.
“Something?” Will cocks a brash brow. “You mean a menace. That’s what Hemlock is. A menace.”
“But you look good,” Alana rushes to correct herself, to stomp down on the blush rising to the apples of her cheeks. “You look happy which is good. Are you? Happy, I mean.”
“If you are suggesting I was expecting Monday evening to end the week with a sister I never knew existed? I can’t say I was.” Will states, shuffling. “But neither can I say I’m entirely upset I have. Everything else is so…” now it was Will’s turn to struggle for the right word, the right fit, “new. I haven’t got a grasp on exactly how I feel right now.” Then, mentally, it appeared Will struck gold. “She makes me laugh, so there’s that. And there hasn’t been a dull moment since she woke up. Keeps me on my toes. Keeps me from thinking about-“
Will breaks off, but he didn’t have to. Alana already knew the ending. Keeps me from thinking about Garret Jacob Hobbs. The man I killed.
“That’s good.” Alana repeats herself. “New things and new relationships can be hard to quantify,” and doesn’t Alana know that one. “The rest will come in time.”
Gingerly, she gestures over her shoulder with a thumb and a smile. “Feel like coming to the cafeteria for a lukewarm coffee in a too small cup?” Typically, Will would jump at the chance. He’d nod and follow her along, and they would talk idly about their respective days in obtuse roundabout ways-
Not this time. This time, Will shakes his head. “I’m going to stick here with Hemlock,” he pointedly glances down to his wrist watch, “and Hannibal is due for a stop over soon. So…”
So.
Alana’s hand flops down, swinging listlessly by her hip. It’s different, new, Alana would admit, being on the opposite end of a refusal. “Oh,” she starts, and paints on a bright smile. “Yes, of course. I really should have rung before coming. Maybe next time?”
Will nods, and his kind-soft smile, as lopsided as it always is, looks to Alana more imitating in this light. “Next time.”
Alana retreats after a quick, flimsy goodbye, retracing the steps she came from. Her heels once more clattering along the sterile floor of the hospital hallway.
Hemlock stands by the wall, peering out the hospital window to the carpark out front. She lazily considers the people coming and going. Some in ambulances strapped to stretchers, other’s toddling from their cars carrying big teddies and colourful balloons, a few with flowers and wide steps that screech grief-heavy.
Her wheelchair was left empty behind her, by her hospital bed.
Hemlock shouldn’t be standing, but as with everything she shouldn’t do, she is.
Her doctor said she should only be walking or on her feet for an hour a day for the next fortnight, to ease any possible stress to her shiny-not-new-heart. Yet, Hemlock can’t bare sitting any longer. Laying down any longer. Being still any longer. It feels like any moment now a Death Eater was going to pop out the heart monitor and strangle her to death if she lingers a moment more. So here she stands, half hidden by the blinds and the wall, watching people go about their lives with the humdrum landscape of the steady march of time.
She feels a bit cut off from it all, like she was pressing her nose up against an aquarium glass to spy the sharks swimming in the zoo.
The subtle knock of the door latch catching makes her glance over, just in time to see Dr. Lecter slipping through the door. He’s in a suit again, three-piece and personally tailored Hemlock suspected, with a substantial duffel bag in hand.
He walks like Tom Riddle used to walk. With all the grace that is contrary to their immense height and stature. A man who is not only used to taking up room, but expects it to be owed to him.
“Will’s not here,” Hemlock chirps as he shuts the door behind him, “he’s gone to find my lead Doctor so she can sign my discharge papers. If you hurry, you might be able to catch him.”
Hemlock turns back to the window, to the people below who look so small from this high up it feels like she’s looming herself, towering over an ant hill. She pictures herself with matches, with sticks, with a heavy boot to stomp. Godzilla in need of an ego check.
“It is a good thing I already caught him in the hall then.” Dr. Lecter teases, earning another backwards glance from Hemlock. She finds him moving to the table at the end of the room, a large Tupperware tub in the hand not holding the duffel bag, which he had already set down at the end of her bed. “I’ve brought you lunch.”
Hemlock pushes away from the window, hobbling for her wheelchair. She feels slow and unsteady on her feet, as if a breeze could knock her down, and she hates it. Being slow gets you killed. “It’s not going to work, you know.”
“hmm?” Hannibal quietly questions as Hemlock falls into her wheelchair, already setting out napkins and utensils. He pops the lid to the Tupperware, and the smell of meat and spices bud tantalizingly into the air.
“Yeah, it’s not going to work,” Hemlock takes her time wheeling herself over to the table, fights down the urge to snatch the food and gobble it all down before it can be taken from her. Growing up eating scraps she found in the kitchen bin of Petunia’s house had made her a little… food insecure.
It was something she was working on.
“Being nice to me, it’s not going to magic Will out of his clothes. This isn’t some Hollywood movie,” Hemlock kicks back in her chair, trying very, very hard to nonchalantly peek inside the Tupperware, to make it seem as if she’s unbothered by the smell, not hungry, “being kind to the orphan doesn’t grant you three wishes.”
“Is that the only way you can imagine someone showing decency to you?” Hannibal questions back without missing a beat. He doesn’t seem the type of man to ever do so. “When they believe they have something to gain from it?”
The question hits too close to home, comes far too close to the truth, and so Hemlock side-steps it completely. “Because if this was a Hollywood movie,” she jokes, “Will would be played by Sandra Bullock. You,” she regards Hannibal cleanly, tapping her chin as if she was deep in serious thought, “would be played by Gwendoline Christie or... Mads Mikkelsen. Yeah, Mads would do you well, I think.”
“And who would get the honour of playing you?” Yes, Hemlock had been right. He really never missed a beat, did he?
“Me?” Hemlock hums long and low, feeling how the cords in her throat stretch tight, “I’m more of a silver screen soul, silent movie type. Charlie Chaplin, maybe. I could rock the hell out of that end speech from the Great Dictator, don’t you think?”
She’s said too much. Remembers just what that speech was about a fraction too late. Machine hearts and machine minds. And Hemlock has one of those now. A heart Tom never used now ticking away overtime in the chest of a machine girl programmed to fight the good fight. She tries to grin as bright as she can through her slip-up. “Or, you know, Steve Buscemi. My friend Hermione said I was about as bug-eyed as him once. Then again, I had just accidently set her favourite dress on fire.”
“Well,” Dr. Lecter takes a spare seat, finally, politely pushing the Tupperware her way. “Bug-eyed or not, you should eat.”
Hemlock finally caves, gazing into the Tupperware. She finds a type of one-pot pork pilaf that smells heavenly. She still hesitates before plucking up the fork. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
Whatever he makes of her suspicion, Dr. Lecter smiles at her for it, seemingly a little impressed. “We’re going to eat later, but you could use the extra protein. Go on,” he urges, “before it gets cold.”
Hemlock takes a tentative first bite, and if she thought it smelled heavenly, the aroma had nothing on the taste. Her manners last all of three bites before she’s decidedly shovelling it in in break neck speeds.
“Will told me you were rather rude to Dr. Bloom earlier.” Dr. Lecter says a little while later, and Hemlock has to hastily chew and swallow before she can respond.
“Dr. Bloom?”
Lecter nods. “Alana.” He clarifies. Oh.
“I wasn’t rude.” Hemlock retorts in an almost kneejerk reaction. Too fast and too precipitous to be innocent. She promptly corrects herself, and she was adamant it had nothing to do with the cynical look playing out between Dr. Lecter’s dark gaze and her delicious pilaf. “I wasn’t as rude as I could have been.”
“Is there a particular reason you could have been rude, then?” Dr. Lecter throws her words right back at her like a game of hot-potato. He sits tall in his chair, straight backed and straight faced, and Hemlock snatches up the napkin, wiping her mouth before neatly re-folding it to place on her lap. This, for some reason, seemed to greatly please the good Doctor.
Hemlock, though, was only reminded of the years Petunia and Vernon had beat manners into her. When she was let out her cupboard, which was rare, of course.
“I know her type.” She shrugs carelessly. “I’ve ran into them before.”
“And what is Alana’s type?” His head is cocked, as if Dr. Lecter was actually interested in what she had to say, on what she had interpreted, as if anything she knew actually held value.
It was a far cry from being back home shouting until she was blue in the face that Tom Riddle was back and no one believing her. Sometimes, not even her closest friends.
“The type that doesn’t really see you.” Idly, Hemlock begins picking at the seam in the napkin below the table, counting stitches on the underside. It must be an expensive sort of napkin. Bought in singular rather than a six pack from some fancy shop that didn’t have home bargain bins. The tag says hand wash only. “They think they do, but they don’t. Alana only sees the Will she imagines she can make. She’s what I’d call a fixer.”
Tired of the stitches, tired of the counting, tired of this bloody hospital and being forced to sit in this fuckin’ chair, Hemlock huffs. “She’ll push with Will on the concept that she can turn him into the image she’s made of him in her head, and she’ll tell herself she’s ‘helping’ him. When that inevitably fails, when the dopamine hit of successfully repairing the poor, broken thing she was ‘good’ enough to take under wig never hits, she’ll say that it’s just not working out and dust her hands of it all and move onto the next project. Problem is,” Hemlock presses on, “by that point it’s too late. She’s already imprinted her idea of Will, on what he could be if only he was what she imagined, inside him. Then he will be left not being able to measure up to a man who never even existed in the first place, and do you know who he’ll blame for that? Not her. Never her. Himself.”
Just as Hemlock blames herself for not quite living up to the Saviour Dumbledore had made her out to be. The sacrificial child who gave their life for the greater good, for love.
Truth is, the sad, sad truth, Hemlock had just wanted to survive. That was it. There, with Tom, had been no time to think of repercussions or grand acts of heroism. And any acts that might be construed as heroic on Hemlock’s part had been accidental. Lucky happenstance.
Most of the time Hemlock had been flying on the seat of her knickers, just trying to live to the next hour, the next minute, the next second. Tom and his followers had dogged her for years, crowded her around every corner she tried to escape to. Every path she took, Tom had been waiting at the end for her.
From being poisoned with the worlds deadliest snake Venom to being accosted in Parliament on a school trip, when did Hemlock have time to breathe let alone even conceptualize a notion of the greater good and her role in ensuring it?
She didn’t.
She fuckin’ didn’t.
And just like Will would with Alana, she can’t blame Dumbledore for that. She faults herself for falling into the trap, for buying into the programming, for drinking the bloody Kool-Aid. And that’s not right. That’s not fair. None of this is fair.
And she’s angry.
Furious.
Suddenly, Hemlock is livid that no one, not Molly, not McGonagall, not Arthur or Shacklebolt, not even Sprout, fully grown adults with all their cognitive abilities intact, had stepped in and said enough is enough, said one simple thing. Thought one thing. Considered. One. Fuckin’. Thing.
She’s a child.
She was a child… Hemlock was a child, and no one thought to try and take the weight of Tom and his unholy war from her shoulders. To bare the weight with her. To say it wasn’t her responsibility to end an underground conflict she didn’t begin.
Even just to hold her hand.
Open participation was bad, but, Hemlock was beginning to think, sitting back and letting something happen because it came up aces for you and yours could be just as insidious.
What’s one life to a hundred? Too high a cost. Or it should be too high a cost. If this imperceptive greater good cost the good of just one soul… how ‘good’ could it really be? Where did you draw the line? Ten for a thousand? A hundred? Half?
Hemlock doesn’t know. She really doesn’t know. Maybe she’s just projecting onto Will and feeling tender about it all. Maybe none of this matters a lick, and good and morals and truth were just safety blankets everyone wrapped themselves in to hide from the dark.
To pretend anything they ever did mattered to anything at all.
Maybe, in the end, her head is just rightly fucked right now.
“Or it could be,” Hemlock verbally sneaks back, slips into joking because it’s safer, better, “I just didn’t like her handbag. Did you see it? It was at least five seasons out of London Fashion week.” It’s a jab too, at Dr. Lecter, at his clear-cut penchant for fashion and finery. He takes it with a tiny smile tweaking at the corners of his mouth.
“You’re very observant, aren’t you?” He questions in the way people ask a question when they don’t expect an answer. When they think they already have it. “So tell me, what do you observe when you look at me?”
“You?” Hemlock chews the conversation over better than she had chewed the pork in the pilaf, debating on just how far she should go. Ultimately, she settles on what she typically settles on. Too far. “I think you put a lot of effort into how you are perceived by the outside world. Everything about you, from your haircut to your shoelaces, perfectly tied by the way showing your attention to detail, is picked and preened over. The way you walk is like an actor on a stage play. The way you talk is out of the pages of a verbose gothic novel. It’s not because you particularly care about what people think of you,” at least Hemlock didn’t think it was because of that, “it’s because you’ve realized it’s a certain face, a certain tone, an air of romanticism that gets you what you want. But underneath all that... yes, underneath all that…”
Doctor Lecter sits through it, silent, straight, staring. “Underneath all that?” He pushes when Hemlock doesn’t seem willing to jump the last hurdle.
“Underneath all that you’re an incredibly, achingly lonely man.” Hemlock can see that much, at least. It’s there for others too, if they were to simply look. It’s hiding in the way he lingers on the outskirts of conversations, talking but not speaking, in the way he watches Will leave through a door or go down a hall.
Once more, Hemlock, like a ricocheting bullet, bounces back to joviality. Back to safer ground. “I mean you have to be if you think rushing into quasi-adopting a feral Omegan teen who is quite possibly either going to develop PTSD or already has, is a smart move. Never mind that you're willing to risk all the dog hair Will is going to track about your Parisian rugs.”
There’s a clock in the hallway outside her door, and though it is too far away for it to be possible, Hemlock thinks she hears it ticking on for a long, long while before… Well, before Dr. Lecter is smiling at her, really smiling, a flash of white teeth in a broad face. “Me and you,” he says as he reaches for the near empty Tupperware, popping the lid primly back on. “Are going to get along swimmingly, I believe.”
Hemlock, nevertheless, is not so convinced. “I don’t find you that interesting.”
There’s a glint now, a steely edge in Lecter’s eye, mirth keen as a daggers blade. “You’re brother once said exactly the same thing. I will tell you what I told him. You will.”
Well… he’s got her there, hasn’t he. Still, Dr. Lecter doesn’t give Hemlock time to formulate a comeback, something witty about Will’s obviously poor taste, before he’s gesturing to the duffel on the bed.
“I’ve brought you some clothes for when you are discharged,” he holds his hand out for the napkin, which Hemlock relinquishes. “I did not know your size, so I had to go by eye. They should fit for now, however. I also know you are currently on high-strength scent blocking aerosol,” on instinct, thinking of that horribly nasal spray the doctors make her shove up her nose and spritz, Hemlock’s face screws up. “But I took the initiative to lightly scent them with my own smell. I hope I haven’t been too forward.” He makes his way to the duffel on the bed, rummaging through it with his back turned.
He had been. Very forward. Bordering improper for even speaking about it.
But, and it was a begrudging sort of but Hemlock thinks, it made sense. The scent blockers simply temporarily neutralized her ability to notice smells, not that she wasn’t smelling them at all. As an Omega, Alpha scents could be… problematic. Especially when they were on her, They could instigate fight or flight responses if suddenly shoved into her face. Given her recent heart transplant, an abrupt exposure to a too strong scent could lead to stress and thus, heart failure.
Being slowly introduced to it through scent blockers and a light, gradual introduction to it continually before slowly weaning her off the blockers all together would very much reduce the probability of that outcome.
It would also mean she’ll be partially inclined and instinctually equating the smell to ‘pack’ before she even gets a proper whiff of it herself. Then she’ll want it around her all the time. Have a small comfort-reliance on it.
Omega's got the unfortunate overdose of sensory-stimuli sensitivity while Alphas ran with a penchant for emotional instability, and Beta's lucked out with slight temperature regulation issues. That means while Betas needed an extra scarf or fan during winter and summer, Alpha's were losing their shit or having a breakdown on the flip of a coin, while Omega's were in a dark corner huffing fuckin' scents like glue highs and rolling around in blankets trying not to get sensory overload.
Not for the first time, that had been the absolute shit-show of being smacked in the face with all the sensory input a shared dorm room with pre-teen girls gave, Hemlock begrudged the fact she wasn't born a Beta.
Dr. Lecter likely didn’t know that though. Not many people did with Omegas, with the rarity of Hemlock’s secondary gender. He likely believed he was merely making sure her heart would continue beating, and not soft-bonding on the down-low. Still, it’s a big thing to ask for, even inadvertently, and Hemlock was about to say no thanks when Dr. Lecter turned, holding up a piece of clothing.
It wasn’t a dress, thank god, but neither was it her typical jeans and jacket. No. Dangling from his fingers was the fluffiest, softest looking jumper Hemlock had ever seen. Another Omegan weak spot.
Soft things.
Hemlock’s mouth snapped shut from where she had been able to speak. The palms of her hands felt itchy, greedy and grabby. The glands on her wrist and neck gave a merry little buzz of excitement. Appreciation.
Well… it’s not like she couldn’t ween herself off from wearing the scent when she became acclimatized to it. When the risk of it causing rejection to her heart was over the hill. It might make her irritable for a month or two… but Hemlock was an irritable girl to begin with and that jumper looked so soft-
She’s before him and taking the jumper before she even realizes she’s on the move. Dr. Lecter’s smile reminds her of the hunger she felt when she smelled the pork pilaf. A thing that knots up and squirms. Yet, it’s gone before it’s really there, and he’s shoving move clothes into her hands, soft corduroy trousers and fluffy socks and a t-shirt made out of finely pressed cotton. “You should get changed,” he gestures to the second door beside the bed, the one leading to the bathroom, “Will will be back soon with your discharge papers.”
Hemlock shuffles along to do as she’s bid, feeling a little like she’s accidently chose trick instead of treat.
It feels indescribably good to step out into the carpark, to breathe in fresh air, to be out of a hospital gown. This moment, this beautiful moment in time, Hemlock savours.
Will is beside her, helping her down the steps, and Hannibal Lecter is already waiting at the bottom for them, her empty wheelchair folded and carried underneath a strong arm.
Hemlock had been adamant about this. That she walk out the hospital on her own two feet. Will had kicked up a fuss, but she hadn’t budged on the matter, though she had compromised with a promise to use the blasted chair for the rest of the day.
It felt important, this moment, to walk away by herself while Tom Riddle laid rotting on a morgue slab behind her. Poetic, a little.
They’re halfway down the steps when Will catches a whiff of her. “Why do you smell of Hannibal?” His tone is positively snappy.
Hemlock, feebly, and god she hates how weak she is right now, shrugs, leaning heavy on the arm she clutches as she limps down another stair. “Exposure therapy. Hannibal thinks it will mess with my heart less this way due to the scent blockers holding off any reaction until I’ve already become accustomed to it.”
Will hums, and there’s something in the way he cuts a glance from her to Hannibal, from Hannibal back to her, a sort of eclipsed avarice itch that strikes up in his pupil, and he pauses them there, in the middle of the steps, to shuffle awkwardly around. “Have you got ants in your pants or-“
She’s cut off by the sweep of fabric, the heavy, comforting weight pressing on her shoulders from where Will had shifted his own jacket around her. He does that lopsided grin of his, the one he does when he thinks he’s being slick. “Best to cover all bases, then, right?” He scoops up her arm again, moving them along and down.
Hannibal is grinning at the end of their path, and suddenly the hairs on the back of Hemlock’s neck raise and heckle. At him. At Will. For a brief blink, her flight instinct nearly breaks through the heady wall of the cocktail of drugs and scent blockers she’s on, before pathetically fizzling away to a muted unease.
She side-eyes her brother, and for a flash, a flicker, she sees a black heron where his shadow stretches down the stairs.
When the black heron hunts, it shapes its wings into an umbrella that creates shade. This allows it to see down into the water by reducing the sun’s glare, but serves the dual purpose of attracting fish, which were drawn to the dark because they thought it was safe.
Hemlock resolutely shakes that image off. Of Will with his jacket as an umbrella. Of being tricked instead of treated with a fluffy jumper. She’s being paranoid.
It isn’t the first time.
Hannibal had been right. When someone shows her some sort of kindness, she thinks they’re after something from her. She thinks of the lemon drops in the crinkled paper bag Dumbledore held out for her to take for being ‘good’.
Sometimes kindness is just kindness, Hemlock resolutely tells herself.
“Ready?” Will asks when they’re nearly at the bottom of the stairs. No, Hemlock doesn’t think she’s ready, she wants to go back up to the top of the hospital and stare down at the rest of the world where it looked like an ant hill, but she’s never been one to go backwards instead of forwards, no matter how perilous the climb might look, so she nods. “Ready.”
Hemlock takes the last step off the stairs, holds onto Will tighter, and finds herself walking into a strange, new world.